What was going on when I was born?

The United States ordered the recall of its Ambassador from Pretoria today to protest South African military raids into neighboring Botswana this morning and into Angola last month. The South African military moves have raised ''the most serious question about that Government's recent conduct and policy,'' Bernard Kalb, the State Department spokesman, said. He said the United States ''rejects categorically such a policy which is antithetical to the goal of working for negotiated solutions and an end to southern Africa's cycle of violence.'' Low Point of Relations ''In light of this and other recent events,'' Mr. Kalb said, ''we have decided to call our Ambassador to South Africa, Herman Nickel, home on consultations to review the situation.''

Gunmen commandeered a Trans World Airlines jetliner with 104 Americans and 49 other people aboard yesterday and forced it to fly on a twisting course from Athens to Beirut to Algiers, then back to Beirut, where one passenger was shot to death, and again to Algiers. The plane landed at Algeria's Houari Boumedienne airport for the second time during the hijacking at 8:45 this morning (2:45 A.M., New York time), according to Nancy Johnson, a member of a State Department task force in Washington. She said no information was received immediately about the condition of the passengers. The odyssey was filled with moments of terror, but no one appeared to be seriously injured until the plane landed for a second time in Beirut early this morning, Beirut time. There the pilot radioed the control tower and said of one of the hijackers: ''He just killed a passenger! He just killed a passenger!'' 'You Now Believe' A hijacker then got on the radio and told the control tower: ''You see. You now believe. There will be another within five minutes.''

The police said yesterday that they had found witnesses who corroborated a plainclothesman's account of being assaulted before he fatally shot a 17-year-old Harlem youth outside Morningside Park Wednesday night. The plainclothes officer, Lee Van Houten, said he opened fire after two youths jumped him from behind, knocked him down and kicked and pummeled him in an apparent robbery attempt, the police said. But the family of the victim, Edmund E. Perry, and their lawyer asserted that the youth, an honors graduate of a preparatory school, had no reason to commit such a crime. They charged that the shooting was unjustified and racially motivated. Mr. Perry was black; the officer is white. Many people who knew Mr. Perry said they found it inconceivable that a young man who had achieved so much already and had such a bright future could have taken part in a crime.

Two American handwriting experts said tonight that they had positively identified letters found in Brazil as having been written by Josef Mengele, the fugitive Nazi war criminal. The finding, described as ''definite,'' is the first scientific evidence to back up testimony that the former Auschwitz death camp doctor lived in and around Sao Paulo from 1961 until friends say he drowned in 1979. [Josef Mengele's son gave a Munich-based magazine hundreds of photographs, letters and 30 pounds of other documents depicting his father's life on the run, an editor for the magazine said. Page 5.] 'A Thorough Examination'

President Raul Alfonsin announced an ''economy of war'' tonight to bring the country's extraordinarily high inflation rate to a standstill. The program combines the creation of a new currency, wage and price controls and a halt to the Government's deficit spending. ''I come to you now to present the battle plan so that together we will be able to definitely cancel the chapter of national decay,'' Mr. Alfonsin said in a speech he delivered to the nation tonight. ''We do not have any option, we have to reconstruct Argentina.'' In a televised address, Mr. Alfonsin pleaded with the country's 30 million people to support the drastic steps to control the country's inflation rate, which was 1,010 percent in the latest 12 months.

The Israeli-backed South Lebanon Army agreed today to release the 21 Finnish soldiers of a United Nations unit whom it has been holding hostage for a week, United Nations and Israeli military sources said. The release, scheduled to take place Saturday at 11 A.M. in the southern Lebanon village of Merj 'Uyun, was decided upon by the commander of the South Lebanon Army, Gen. Antoine Lahd, after he became convinced that 11 S.L.A. men whom the Finns turned over to the Shiite militia Amal on June 7 had indeed defected, Israeli military sources said. General Lahd told the Israeli Army, which arms, trains and advises his militia, of his decision this evening, an Israeli Army spokesman said. Questioning by Red Cross A representative of the International Committee of the Red Cross met alone Thursday with the 11 South Lebanon Army militiamen in the southern Lebanese city of Tyre, where Amal was holding them. According to United Nations sources, the 11 men said they did not want to return to General Lahd's militia or their homes in the area along the Israel-Lebanon border that Israel refers to as its security zone. The 11 South Lebanon Army men are Shiites. General Lahd is a Maronite Christian, and the ranks of the South Lebanon Army are predominantly Christian.

In what many lawyers called a landmark decision, three company officials were found guilty of murder today in an employee's death from cyanide poisoning. In a nonjury trial, Judge Ronald J. P. Banks of Cook County Circuit Court found that the three executives of Film Recovery Systems were responsible for workplace conditions so unsafe that they led to the poisoning of Stefan Golab, a 59-year-old Polish immigrant. ''It's the first case we know of where executives have been found guilty of murder in an industrially related death,'' said Jay C. Magnuson, one of the state's prosecutors in the case. The three men convicted were Steven J. O'Neil, former president of Film Recovery Systems; Charles Kirschbaum, the plant supervisor, and Daniel Rodriguez, the plant foreman. They face prison sentences ranging from 20 years to 40 years. The judge set June 28 as the sentencing date and revoked their bail.

South African commandos attacked Gaborone, capital of neighboring Botswana, early today to strike at targets that South Africa described as the nerve center of the insurgent African National Congress. Sixteen people, one of them a 6-year-old girl, were reported killed in the first attack of its kind against the capital of a black-ruled neighbor since October 1983, when South African commandos attacked an office in Maputo, Mozambique. One South African was reported wounded in the raid today. It was South Africa's first known strike against Botswana, a landlocked, diamond-exporting nation that is economically dependent on South Africa and with which it shares a customs union.

The Soviet Union is pursuing a ''tragic and needless'' campaign against Jews that threatens to block improvement in American-Soviet relations, Bernard Kalb, the State Department spokesman, said today. ''We wish to emphasize the extreme seriousness with which we regard these developments,'' Mr. Kalb said.

''You'll Never Walk Alone,'' says the wrought-iron motto over the gates of the Liverpool soccer club. After Brussels, that sense of shared euphoria has been replaced by other emotions: shock, chagrin and anger. In the pubs and narrow brick homes of a city that has already been brought to its knees by fleeing industries and unemployment, these new emotions are especially hard to bear. For a long time, Liverpudlians have been living on pride. Their two soccer clubs, Liverpool and Everton, were both champions this year. Everton, the League Cup winner in England, played five matches on the Continent on its way to winning the European Cup Winner's Cup. All went off uneventfully, including the final match in Rotterdam on May 15. #21 Years of Good Behavior As the Liverpool fans set off for Brussels to see their team, the national champions, play the Italian champions, the Juventus team of Turin, for the European Cup on June 5, they took with them a 21-year record of good behavior. Then came the horror of the violence, seen by millions on television, before the match could begin.

President Reagan said today at a Flag Day ceremony that Communist ''bullying tactics'' in Central America had only bolstered the determination for freedom. Appearing at Fort McHenry here, where American troops withstood a major assault by the British during the War of 1812, Mr. Reagan linked the struggle for freedom nearly two centuries ago with current conflicts. The President said Americans had a responsibility to lead in such efforts to achieve freedom.

In his first visit to Washington as the leader of India, Rajiv Gandhi has in the eyes of American officials quietly and firmly removed the shadow they felt had been cast over the relationship with the United States by his mother, Indira. Surprisingly informal and confident, a faint smile flickering across his face in every public appearance, the 40-year-old Indian Prime Minister has given the impression to Administration officials that, although heir to the Nehru dynasty that shaped post-independence India, his style, personality and politics seem quite different from the family that shaped him. As Mr. Gandhi prepared to leave the United States Saturday after a daylong trip to Houston, United States officials were expressing delight at the visit so far, which began Tuesday night. ''It's exceeded everything expected,'' Secretary of State George P. Shultz said Thursday night.